Steam Deck OLED review: better, not faster

HowSwayy@lemmy.ml to Gaming@lemmy.ml – 40 points –
Steam Deck OLED review: better, not faster
theverge.com
11

It feels so soon! How do I justify getting this when I still have my old model?

Why would you make more e-waste if you were still happy with your deck yesterday? This is a relatively minor refresh.

I enjoy OLED quite a bit and have yet to get any console with it. If I gifted mine, it wouldn't really be e-waste.

I guess we aren't allowed to want or have nice things though. :(

If you've kept it in decent shape, the old model would make a great Christmas gift for somebody special?

Doesn't take a review to know the performance specs haven't changed, did this reviewer think oled screen somehow meant better GPU?

Honestly, I am always appalled by most "pop"-tech journalists like these. They either just repost the tech specs with the least nuance known to mankind, or they make absurd assumptions by having weird expectations (i.e: the infamous Cuphead review) going in. Seems like in this case it is both!

I attribute this to the much centralisation that completely deformed the internet, and a totalitarian attitude to criticism by critics (hypotactic, isn't it?) they remove and/or make it very hard to have a discussion on their articles.

Back before much of this centralisation of the internet, low-effort popcorn reviews like these would be absolutely panned in the very visible comment section. Also, shitty editorialised titles (which by the way usually aren't even by the author) like these were not as prevalent without massive scrutiny.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


I played an hour and 15 minutes of 2D titles Duck Game and SpeedRunners with some old friends, chatting on Discord all the while, and had 84 percent battery left in the tank when I finished.

With 70 percent remaining as I write these words, my Deck OLED review unit is telling me I can play Slay the Spire for seven more hours since it’s consistently drawing just 5.3 watts now.

And because that new screen was thinner, Valve managed to fit a thicker heatsink, larger fan, and a 22 percent higher capacity 50 watt-hour battery pack into the same space.

It’s like getting a new pair of headphones and wanting to hear all your favorite songs again: that’s how I’d describe the Steam Deck’s slightly larger and absolutely better RGB-stripe HDR OLED screen.

Elden Ring’s magical bolts of fire come alive, and after some in-game HDR brightness adjustment, the golden light of the Erdtree starts to feel blindingly divine.

Even on a purely cosmetic level, the larger 7.4-inch size makes for noticeably smaller bezels, and the true blacks of completely turned off OLED pixels mean there’s no ugly backlight bleed or unfortunate gray letterboxing when you’re playing games at 16:9 rather than the native 16:10 aspect ratio.


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I had a steam deck for a bit. I never used it as a handheld. it is a great little linux gaming box. my guess for anyone that wants to use one connected to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor the older ones are going to be a great deal.

I never thought about someone turning the deck into their main rig. But it makes sense seeing as it's basically a handheld gaming PC.

SteamOS uses Steam as an installer that uses WINE to install surprisingly many Windows applications and run them.

Honestly if it could run MacOS's messages.app on the Steam Deck I would still own roll with it.